Have You Become Complacent With Your Freelance Writing Yet?

By Dan Smith

I love writing. From writing stories as a child to the press release I’m currently drafting for a client, I’m not quite sure exactly what it is I love so much about it, but being able to sit in front of a computer and knock out word after word really does make me a happy person.

I’ve spent the last few years developing as a writer. Growing my client base, continually expanding my knowledge and honing my writing skills. They’re not perfect by any means, but I’m proud to say I’m a freelance writer who gets paid for doing what they love.

Whilst every freelance writer has their ups and downs, I recently received a few comments from clients that knocked me a little, as they suggested the work I was producing had dropped in quality.

To start with, this p*ssed me off. Massively. I admit that one of my problems as a person — not just as a writer — is I have a poor ability to accept feedback. Whether it’s positive or negative, I have a tendency to feel awkward and just uncomfortable that someone feels something I’ve produced is good or bad enough to make a comment on it.

I think I was so annoyed to start with because I’d been producing pieces for the client for a while and had only received positive feedback. Then, out of no where, I got the comments that suggested things had changed massively.

I initially thought I must have made a few typos or sent across a draft version rather than the final product and I set about looking at the piece I’d sent them.

And as soon as I’d read through it, it hit me that over the last few weeks, I’d started to get complacent.

Not proofing things properly. Not treble checking the document’s quotes or citations. Not reading it out loud (a massive point for me, as I’ve realised I can skip over things if I read something in my head). Using the same source for pieces only a week or two apart. Nothing majorly terrible, just little things that were due to complacency.

I know the reason why I’d become complacent — I thought I’d had that client nailed, something you should never think. And strangely, it was the first time I can actually remember thinking it.

I think a lot of this was due to an increased workload and increased responsibilities elsewhere, meaning I had — or I thought I had — less time to focus on writing, so I ended up not cutting corners as such, but not taking as much time as was necessary — and hearing this feedback made me almost instantly rethink my focus.

It’s considerably easier to keep an existing customer than it is to attract a new one and it’s this phrase that continues to stick in my head. If I end up annoying several of my clients, they’ve got no reason to stay with me. At the end of the day, their loyalty is only there if I’m delivering the products they expect and if I’m not, they’ll move on. Should that happen, it means I’ll have to work twice as hard to not only get my writing back to the standard it was, but to put my sales hat back on and get out there attracting new clients.

I believe at one point in time, we all become complacent and I actually think it’s good that we do — just once, though, as it give me the wake up call I needed to remember what exactly needs to be done to continue to please my clients and succeed in my career.

Image: paraflyer (fotopedia)